In Praise of Professors: The Most Untypical Lyrical Phil

I heard about Professor Philip De Wolfe before I met him. The year was 1987 and what I heard was to change the direction my life would take from then on. I have Gloria to thank.

Gloria and I had met two weeks earlier at a T-ball practice session for our pre-school tots. While chatting we'd discovered we were both students at Anoka Ramsey Community College in Coon Rapids Minnesota. I was taking classes in business management. She was pursuing an Associate of Arts degree.

“One week in his classroom, “ Gloria said, grabbing her head in mock distress “and he has you writing a paper trying to prove that you are sane.”

I’d been listening with half a mind to Gloria as she talked about her work at school. My four-year-old son had just made it safely to first base despite an ecstatic detour into a nearby puddle. Her remark startled me. A professor who asked you to prove you were sane? What an amazing challenge.

“You can’t imagine what his classes are like!” Gloria seized my hand. “You’d love him.”

Until then I’d thought of taking only courses  that would improve my business skills. I owned a small jewelry business. It was one thing to design and sell jewelry, another to run the business. I did the first well, the second not nearly as well. I wrote his name on the back of a bank deposit slip and the following semester decided to chuck a business law class to take English 101, as Gloria suggested, the offering taught by Professor De Wolfe.

          The first essay he assigned us was not the one proving we were sane. We were to write a short essay about fall. I'll ace this one, I thought. I got a B minus. 

B minus? I was incensed. I’d never gotten a B minus. After class that day I asked Mr. De Wolfe if I could discuss my grade with him. “Certainly,” he said. “I’m heading for my office now.” He motioned for me to follow him.

His office was piled high with papers. They tottered on chairs, collapsed off bookshelves, marched in piles across the floor. The window ledge over his desk was a tangle of cacti, violets, and ferns.“Before we start chatting,” he said, settling himself on the edge of his desk, “I’d prefer that you address me as Phil outside the classroom. What did you say your name was?” I told him. He fumbled in his jacket pocket and drew out a package of cigarettes and shaking one toward me asked, “Do you smoke Beryl?” I told him no.  “Do you mind if I do?” I shook my head.“Filthy habit. Wish I’d the will power to give it up.” He lit the cigarette and inhaled. Deeply. “So. You want to know why I gave you a B minus?" I nodded again. “You write well, but you haven’t done the assignment. I asked you to write about fall and you have told me nothing about fall. Your essay is filled with generalizations. No details. No sensory images that would make your fall something a reader could experience. Get specific!” He pounded his desk for emphasis. His curly white hair frizzed, his eyes glittered, his voice thundered.

          No one could address details better than Phil could. His stories hummed with details; details that vibrated with scent and color and touch and emotion. He prowled the classroom like a bushy gray-haired lion, looming over our desks, wrenching answers from even the most obstinate or nonchalant student. Superficial responses were accosted.

“And . . .?” he’d growl. He’d stand there, the silence sometimes frightening, waiting for them to say more. They’d mumble something else. “And . . .?” he demand again. He give them a hint. “What does it make you think of; remind you of? Why do you think the author phrased it that way.” And gradually, like a gardener picking carrots, he’d take the flimsy leaves of their conclusions and draw something more meaningful to the surface.

Students who came to his classes because they had to, freshmen football jocks and teeny boppers; sales clerks and truck drivers and accountants found themselves tapping into a wisdom they didn’t know they possessed. With the timid, he coaxed until they brought forth the gem he knew they were hiding. Phil believed in the power of words to transform us, to turn us all into geniuses; and, as he did this, he made us believe that it was he who was being transformed. We who were giving him gifts.

          Here’s an excerpt of a letter our most untypical, lyrical Phil wrote on an Easter Sunday morning after having shared a meal at our home the night before.

          “You will not be mystified (because you are so easily mystified) when I say that I have spent most of this day, since before sunrise, crying. Over and over the dawning of such a beautiful spring morning, the rich, joyful music—choirs, orchestras, bells and the birds that accompanied dawn, clomping around in my swamp of subtle spring where the willows have kittens clinging and the wise words of God and man’s philosophies have brought such happy tears. Finally, not least of all, the joy of recollecting friends old and new—I am so gifted by life right now I can hardly control the urge to go down to my river and sing with it and walk across -- ON the water -- of course.”

          Oh, and about that essay on sanity? Yes, he did ask us to write it. And then he showed us how our proofs of sanity had nothing to do with the mind but everything to do with our cultural conditioning. In Phil’s class we became detectives. He taught us to hunt for symbols, to recognize metaphors, to pounce on analogies. He taught us how to read as writers.  

          I took every class I could from Phil while at Anoka Ramsey. I studied poetry, women’s literature, the short story, the novel. Because Phil believed in me, told me I was a writer, I have become that writer. It took years but I now have a large portfolio of newspaper columns, feature articles, and essays. Phil would be pleased. Phil died in 1999. He was not here to greet the publication of my first book The Scent of God (Counterpoint NY. Hardcover 2006. Paperback 2007) but he is there -- within every page of that book. 

There are teachers like Phil the world over who continue to change the lives of students they manage to lift from mediocrity to success; from self-doubt to belief. Along with those students, I say thank-you to each and every prophet and mentor (for that is what they are) who were willing to put in years of often heroic effort and sacrifice to transform our lives. I’ve known many such teachers but known only one Phil De Wolfe. To him I offer my greatest thanks.

Beryl is Star Tribune Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors